Howdy teachers! I gotta
tell you – I’m reading this new book on anti-gravity. I can’t put it
down. Just kidding, onto science. Lots of grade levels get to start
new standards this week according to the pacing map, so this email will be a
doozey.
Kindergarten
– We’re on to k.4.2 – “Describe
the parts of living things.” Lots to do here! Just do you know, in later
grades they’ll be focusing on how these different parts offer survival
advantages to these living things, so keep that in the back of your mind as
you’re putting this together. Here’s a great excerpt from the
Supplemental Material from the USOE: “ Have
students compare/contrast the differences and similarities between animal
structures. Ask them to investigate using the following questions (and others
that you or your students choose):
Do
all animals look the same? What are the major differences between specific
types of animals? (ex. Compare a duck to a snake to a dog)”
First
Grade Ideas – We’re looking at a related objective in 1st grade, 1.4.1:
“Communicate observations
about the similarities and differences between offspring and between
populations.” So the offspring are the animal’s young, and the population
being the group as a whole. Indicator (a) gets more specific:
“Communicate observations about plants and animals, including humans, and how
they resemble their parents.” Here’s
another good idea from the Supplemental Material, again from the USOE: “Students can create a family tree poster with photographs
or drawings (FA). Working in groups, students can identify similarities and
differences in characteristics when comparing offspring to parents and siblings
to siblings.”
Second
Grade Ideas – Rocks! I’m jealous – teaching rocks is a blast. Let’s
look at this objective: “Describe
the characteristics of different rocks.” Pretty straight forward. I
like to start with this indicator: “Describe rocks in terms of their parts
(e.g. crystals, grains, cement).” It
builds some common language for other indicators. Here is some
background knowledge for you teachers. Don’t think about rocks as cold
lumps sitting here on the table - think about rocks as having a story.
They were formed possibly billions of years ago, they have undergone changes,
and now they’re here. The rock itself holds many clues about its
story. Unfortunately for your classroom, the location where it was found
also has a huge part to play in telling that story. When a rock sample is
removed from its location, we lose some of that information, which is ok, but
just realize that. So it’s pretty hard to answer the question: “what kind
of rock is this?” when a child brings you one she found on the
playground. But we can start to look for clues, and we can notice a whole
lot of interesting things about that rock, even if we can’t say for certain
that it’s quartzite. If you’re not comfortable with the three kinds of
rocks: sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic, read here: http://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/igneous-sedimentary-metamorphic-rocks/
So a lot of that language – crystals, layers, grains, cement, it’s part of this
idea of story. Here’s the activity, from the Supplemental Material: “Using age‐appropriate tools (magnifying glass, water,
sandpaper, hammer), students can examine rock samples and describe their parts.
The products could include: drawings, charts, journals, or classroom books.” If
you’re going to use hammers, see me for some safety glasses.
Third Grade Ideas – Don’t miss
the cool PD with Clark Planetarium on Tuesday Feb 9th at Rose Park
at 4:30. You should have gotten an email about it, but if you didn’t, let me
know. This week we’re wrapping up forces, motion, and gravity.
Review that stronger (or larger) forces cause a greater change in the object
they’re affecting. This can be from a harder push, or a faster push, or a
push from a more massive thing. Gravity is a force we have to overcome if
we want to go up. And gravity pulls everything back down, towards the
center of the Earth. The more mass something has, the stronger gravity
pulls, so we say it has more weight. With gravity, distance
matters. So if we get far enough away from Earth, its gravitational pull
diminishes. (It’s an inverse square law, for the math nerds.
Thanks, Newton!) Bonus points: everything has a gravitational pull of its
own, proportional to its mass. So you have gravity! So does that
paper clip. Just not very much.
Fourth Grade Ideas – Water
Cycle. Does it get any better in 4th grade? Not for my
money. Let’s look at this indicator: “Locate examples of evaporation and condensation in the water
cycle (e.g., water evaporates when heated and clouds or dew forms when vapor is
cooled).” Let’s start with the most concrete, in my opinion:
evaporation. Leave out a pan of water, and to no one’s surprise, it
evaporates. For a little more fun, do two pans, one with fresh water and
one with salt water. Compare the two pans after evaporation. Or
place two identical pans in two different locations and compare rates of
evaporation. Or if you want something else that’s cool, evaporate water
next to some rubbing alcohol. Notice the difference. So we
established that the water is evaporating, what next? Discuss how water
can turn into a gas. It’s hard for kids to get this, because they won’t
have solid/liquid/gas until 5th grade, but that’s what’s going on.
We can’t see this water vapor – it’s invisible. If you think you’re
seeing water vapor, like steam or fog, you’re actually seeing little drops of
liquid water that have condensed from the gaseous form back to the liquid, and
are now suspended in the air. But that’s a liquid. The amount of water vapor
that air can “hold” depends on its temperature. So a change in
temperature will cause the gaseous water vapor to change into liquid.
Imagine a hot air balloon that’s losing altitude – jettison some cargo!
That cargo would be analogous to our water, and it falls as condensation.
Warm air hits your cold soda can, and as the air cools, some of its water vapor
turns to liquid. The mechanisms behind all this have everything to do
with temperature as a measure of average molecular energy.
Fifth Grade Ideas – Changes in
Matter. Last week, we looked at conservation of matter – that it cannot
be created nor destroyed. This week, we’ll tackle a bigger: chemical vs.
physical changes. Here’s all the stuff from the core:
Evaluate evidence that
indicates a physical change has occurred.
a.
Identify the physical properties of matter (e.g., hard, soft, solid, liquid,
gas).
b.
Compare changes in substances that indicate a physical change has occurred.
c.
Describe the appearance of a substance before and after a physical change.
Investigate evidence for
changes in matter that occur during a chemical reaction.
a.
Identify observable evidence of a chemical reaction (e.g., color change, heat
or light given off, heat absorbed, gas given off).
b.
Explain why the measured weight of a remaining product is less than its
reactants when a gas is produced.
c.
Cite examples of chemical reactions in daily life.
d.
Compare a physical change to a chemical change.
e.
Hypothesize how changing one of the materials in a chemical reaction will
change the results.
There’s a lot there, and I’m
sure you have lots of activities to do to demonstrate both types of
changes. So I’ll focus on the background knowledge that’ll help you teach
these things. First, chemical changes mean a new chemical is
created. Sometimes this is easy to observe – vinegar and making soda
produce carbon dioxide. But for kids, sometimes something looks like a
new chemical when in fact it’s not. Ice and liquid water seem like
totally different chemicals, so a kid might conclude that ice melting means a new
chemical is created. So that’s what you’re up against – building up that
large body of background knowledge about different chemicals. Most physical
changes are pretty obviously not creating something new – gluing paper
together, or breaking a glass. The ones that are trickier tend to be
phase changes. In phase changes (solid to liquid, liquid to gas, etc.)
something a little more mysterious seems to be going on, because the properties
of that material change so dramatically. Just play with that stuff a lot,
and go back to their knowledge about the water cycle. We’ll cover phase
changes a little bit more next week because there are some key things I want to
discuss about the nature of temperature. But that should be enough for
this week. See me if you need some examples or demos.
Sixth Grade Ideas – Just in time
for the end of your unit on the solar system, they found a 9th
planet! Sorta. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/science/space/ninth-planet-solar-system-beyond-pluto.html?_r=0
Talking about how they “discovered” it is a perfect example of: “Describe the role of computers in
understanding the solar system.” Doesn’t get much better than that!
I hope all those Pluto boo-hooers feel better now. In other news, I have the lenses to build a primitive but
functional Galilean Telescope. That accomplishes this: “Describe the use of instruments to
observe and explore the moon and planets.”
And these: “Relate science's
understanding of the solar system to the technology used to investigate
it. Find and report on ways technology has been and is
being used to investigate the solar system.” Give me a specific time and date
and we’ll set it up. If we do it in the first week of February, we can
look at the moon because it’ll be up in the morning then.
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